Ol Cali Camping...

After a wonderful experience at the Grand Canyon and a 6 hour car drive, we had finally reached our destination of Santa Barbara. Finding a campsite became the main task, this was going to be tricky as Ski and I were both being overly silly due to being stuck in the car for hours.

We arrived at this beautiful campsite called Fremont located 30 minutes inland from Santa Barbara. We both jumped out of the car eager to stretch our legs and asked the lovely camp ranger and some guy soon to be known as frisbee man if they had a spot for us for the night. The Ranger replied with Hey your not a terrorist are you? note: This was directed at Ski who initially thought he said tourist and was about to answer yes before releasing what the ranger had truely implied. Interrupting Ski's stutter the ranger continued, we have a lot of crazies in america you're not going to light the place up in the middle of the night are you?  I was giggling away behind Ski cause i have been teasing him for so long about traveling with his beard as you all may know and my instincts were right! haha he actually got asked if he was a terrorist. 

We set up camp and made some wraps for dinner. We were just settling down to play some cards with some beers when the frisbee man came to our camp. Imagine the most american looking man you can motioning to us to come and play frisbee. We were both a bit cautious and tried to  wave the frisbee man off but we reluctantly agreed and went to have a few throws. Lets just say ski and i absolutely loved it, Frisbee man had to cut the session short otherwise we would have played all night! We jumped into Louise for the night exhausted and dreaming of how to improve our frisbee throws. 

Day 2 at Santa Barbara involved a lot of exploring. Santa Barbara is such a beautiful funky beach town with lots of little quaint shops and restaurants leading down to a gorgeous beach and pier. We strolled down the pier and stopped at a little Mexican restaurant for some shared lunch before checking in at our next camping place Carpenteria located twenty minutes from Santa Barbara. We set up camp, went for a swim and went to watch the sunset.  Ski and I have re named ourselves for the duration of our camping trip. Ski has now taken to being called Bear Grylls and myself Lara Croft. First test for Mr Bear Grylls was to manually check the time for sunset, this was done with lots of confidence might i add, its easy Millie (sorry cough Lara) all you do is at arms length measure the distance between the sun and horizon using your fingers. Each finger equates to 15 minutes, easy we have 2 hours to cook dinner and watch the sunset....We missed the sunset. Bear Grylls actually realised it was 15 minutes per two fingers hahaha. We still managed to take some awesome pictures and Bear Grylls has been making some pretty epic well constructed fires i must add. 

Day 3 involved leaving Santa Barbara and driving to Paso Robles however there was one thing left we needed to do. Paddle boarding! It was the most beautiful day, not a breath of wind. We hired two boards and headed off from the Marina at Santa Barbara, gosh what a view and an absolute laugh as we both struggled with our balance and staying on top of the water. I do not know how those yogis do yoga on top of a paddle board. We had an absolutely blast, I think you could hear our laughter from the Pier at Santa Barbara. 

We arrived at Paso Robles after a three hour drive, stopped to get some more supplies including a sneaky wee frisbee and made route to a free campsite i had found online about a 45 minute drive from Paso Robles. Could Lara Croft do it again?? Epic fail we were driving for ages around a lake off some tiny dirt roads. America 2 Bear Grylls and Lara 0. We were just about to give up and head back to Paso Robles with our tails between our legs to check into a cheap hotel for the night before out of the middle of nowhere was one of the most beautiful lakes we had ever seen. Lake Nacimiento. We checked in at the campsite for 1 night which soon turned into 2 because we loved it so much. 

While we were in Paso Robles (recommend by the beautiful Remai) we decided to go and test some of these wines the locals had been talking about, we googled and found Eberle Vineyard. Paso Robles gets super duper hot and is the perfect place for growing grapes. We arrived set to do some wine tasting, we were both pumped when the tasting was complimentary, we both had a little giggle as we remembered our martinborough trip and imagined how the crew would survive here. Eberle Vineyard was beautiful and as part of tasting we got to have a complimentary viewing of the Eberle caves, this is where they store and age all the wine. We joined in with a group of about 7 other people. I had realised that they were in a group together, ski had not. We were down the caves and came across this pyramid of barrels of wine with fairy lights, perfect place to take a photo. The group of friends decide to get in and take a picture together. Im looking around the cave taking it all in and next minute i see Ski standing in the photo waving at me to join. hahaha Ski didn't realise they were in a group. I lost the plot giggling! haha 

After Paso Robles we headed to Carmel by the Sea, a beautiful little old fashioned town. We have checked into the cheapest hotel we could find so we can do some more research for the next camping phase of the trip. Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe. Bear Grylls will be doing the next feature about all his awesome tricks he has been able to apply while camping :) :) 

We love you all and will update soon. 

Lara ( Grylls)